More magnificent even than the entertainment at the Hôtel de Ville was the Tuileries ball on June 10. M. Marx candidly confessed that “only the pen which wrote the ‘Arabian Nights’ could have adequately described the spectacle.” Had he attempted the task, he would have been repeating himself; besides, he had exhausted all his finest phrases, and his stock of adjectives had given out. At the Hôtel de Ville it was a crowd; at the Tuileries there were only 600 guests, and everything “went upon wheels.” The success of the fêtes to the foreign Sovereigns at the Tuileries was asserted to be due to the “high solicitude” and the “incessant surveillance” displayed by the Empress, then in her forty-first year, and determined that the imperial and royal guests should take away with them the most favourable impression and the pleasantest recollection of the Court of the “parvenu” Emperor and the lady who was ungraciously spoken of by her detractors as “the Spanish woman.”
When the King of Prussia and the Crown Prince visited the imperial stables in 1867, they found 360 horses and 150 carriages. The royal couple were greeted by General Henry and Comte Davilliers, Grand Écuyer and Premier Écuyer, surrounded by an army of piqueurs, coachmen, postilions, grooms, estafettes, and others of the personnel, all wearing their State liveries. The horse-boxes were in carved oak; the name of each animal might be read in a medallion at the head of its stall, and surmounted by an imperial crown. Everything was on the grand scale: the straw beds claimed admiration; on the bituminous floor were modelled eagles with outspread wings; the chains and other garniture of the boxes and mangers were of brass and steel, and “shone like carbuncles.” The light fell obliquely on the satin coats of the horses, and on the troughs and fountains.
As the Prussian Sovereign and his only son (the consort of our Princess Royal) passed through the imperial écuries, they saw, standing stiffly and solemnly, piqueurs, postilions, and coachmen, in their buckskin breeches, patent-leather boots, embroidered coats and waistcoats. The green overcoats gleamed with gold braid. King and Prince admired the coachmen, with their plumed tricornes, powdered hair, and “respectable corpulence,” as the celebrated chroniqueur, Adrien Marx, described it. “I believe,” he said, “their grave air and their imposing appearance vanished when they descended from their seats; but there is nothing in that. When they are on their feet they maintain a special attitude, the majesty and chic of which are observable in their prominent ‘corporations.’ Buffon said: ‘Le style, c’est l’homme;’ he might have added: ‘Le ventre, c’est le cocher.’”